““It is an adjustment to be in the kitchen with a stranger, a man, after growing used to the meticulous calm of housewives. When I knock on Ali’s door at the time he’d mimed to me with his fingers, he answers wearing only a pair of pale, green underpants. He picks soil from his fingernails with a kitchen knife while I lean over the sink to scrub my hands. When I try to determine what he wants to be paid for teaching me to cook, he just shrugs his shoulders and looks up at the tall, black-domed ceiling.””